Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) is one of those key indicators that ultimately indicates how streamlined your order management process is — how quickly your product or service gets to your customer and how efficiently they pay you. There are many areas within an organisation’s process that can affect this.

I’ve seen companies shave 3-5 days of DSO just by switching from paper/mailed invoices to electronic invoice delivery. However, recently, I’ve been learning just how much DSO can improve even more. One notable area of focus is the sales order entry process — a process that, if not working efficiently, can negatively affect customer service and DSO.

I had the privilege of sitting in on a presentation by Adrian Posteraro titled: “Overcoming the Negative Business Impacts of a Manual CS Work Environment”. Adrian’s background is quite impressive with 27 years at MEDRAD and heading up Global Customer Support and Global Customer Satisfaction, as well as being responsible for maintaining Business Excellence and Regional Field Service. It’s safe to say that Adrian is more than qualified to speak on behalf of his experiences.

MEDRAD Sales Order Environment Before Esker

MEDRAD previously had a 100% manual sales order entry process, with orders taking anywhere from 7-10 minutes to be fully entered into the ERP system. Aside from the burnout of customer service agents, there were some particular manual sales order entry processes that affected customer service, and, most notably, DSO.

MEDRAD was dealing with backlogged order processing, and missing same-day shipping requests. Order entry errors were creating issues with getting invoices paid, resulting in rebills/re-invoicing. Additionally, the collection department was spending excess time chasing down payments. MEDRAD needed to improve the sales order entry process to mitigate these issues to improve customer satisfaction and DSO.

Sales Order Processing Automation with Esker

What happens when you automate your sales order entry process with Esker? You achieve world-class results! Esker customers consistently see their order entry error rates decline, (i.e., less rebilling/re-invoicing) and backlogged order entry disappear since orders are getting out the door faster and more accurately (i.e., invoices get paid faster).

Which brings us back to square one — improved DSO — which I started out by describing it as one of the key indicators that helps determine how healthy and efficient your order management process is. Now that your gears are turning, what benefits would automating your sales order entry process help your company realise? Leave your comments below!